Product- and Hydro-Validation of Satellite-Based Precipitation Data Sets for a Poorly Gauged Snow-Fed Basin in Turkey

Satellite-based Precipitation (SBP) products are receiving growing attention, and their utilization in hydrological applications is essential for better water resource management. However, their assessment is still lacking for data-sparse mountainous regions. This study reveals the performances of four available PERSIANN family products of low resolution near real-time (PERSIANN), low resolution bias-corrected (PERSIANN-CDR), and high resolution real-time (PERSIANN-CCS and PERSIANN-PDIR-Now). The study aims to apply Product-Validation Experiments (PVEs) and Hydro-Validation Experiments (HVEs) in a mountainous test catchment of the upper Euphrates Basin. The PVEs are conducted on different temporal scales (annual, monthly, and daily) within four seasonal time periods from 2003 to 2015. HVEs are accomplished via a multi-layer perceptron (MLP)-based rainfall-runoff model. The Gauge-based Precipitation (GBP) and SBP are trained and tested to simulate daily streamflows for the periods of 2003-2008 and 2009-2011 water years, respectively. PVEs indicate that PERSIANN-PDIR-Now comprises the least mean annual bias, and PERSIANN-CDR gives the highest monthly correlation with the GBP data. According to daily HVEs, MLP provides a compromising alternative for biased data sets; all SBP models show reasonably high Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency for the training (above 0.80) and testing (0.62) periods, while the PERSIANN-CDR-based MLP (0.88 and 0.79) gives the highest performance.

Automated summary

This study assesses the performances of four different resolution Satellite-based Precipitation (SBP) products in mountainous regions and finds that PERSIANN-PDIR-Now has the least mean annual bias, while PERSIANN-CDR has the highest monthly correlation with Gauge-based Precipitation (GBP) data. Additionally, through a rainfall-runoff model based on a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), all SBP models show relatively high efficiency for both training and testing periods.